Written by

Quartz Staff

January 29, 2014

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Written by

Quartz Staff

January 29, 2014

What to watch for today

Ben Bernanke’s last taper. At the Fed chairman’s last policy meeting, the US central bank is expected to reduce bond-buying by another $10 billion per month, ignoring weak jobs December growth (which economists think was an anomaly) and emerging-market turmoil.

Facebook tries to hush the haters. The company is expected to post a whopping 65% jump in fourth quarter profits on revenue of $2.34 billion, thanks to a boost in advertising over the holidays, even as a string of reports suggest the social media site is becoming less popular.

Wall Street not impressed with Yahoo. Though the company’s quarterly results beat forecasts, its shares fell in after-hours trading on a so-so first-quarter outlook. And it didn’t say anything about whether it’s making money from Tumblr, the blogging platform it bought last May.

​Gwynn Guilford on how fish oil fashion is sending rare sharks to their death. “Today’s bloodbath bulletin concerns whale sharks, which feed on plankton and can grow up to 40 feet (12 meters)—about the length of four station wagons. The sharks are so vulnerable to extinction that most countries forbid fishermen from catching them. That’s not stopping a factory in China’s Zhejiang province from slaughtering 600 whale sharks per year.” Read more here.

Matters of debate

America’s “industrial renaissance” is a farce. It’s a trickle of jobs at poverty-level wages that are heavily dependent on huge public subsidies, says former Obama auto advisor Steven Rattner.